Proper Role of Government

[OrangeEmpire]

What is the proper role of government?

Supposing the majority of people object to gay marriage (or abortion, or poverty, or pornography, or racial/sexual discrimination or whatever) should the government be empowered to take steps against it, even if it means curtailing individual liberty?

Or should the government protect or even expand the rights of minorities against the wishes (or even at the expense of the liberties of) the majority?

Should government be empowered to:

* Enforce social norms and traditions?
* Enact taxation?
* Redistribute wealth?
* Enforce "the will of the people?"
* Protect the rights of individuals?
* Bring about social change?
* Empower historically disadvantaged groups (women, minorities, etc?)

While the above list is not exhaustive, it should provide a bit of food for thought on this subject matter. Answer this question by appealing to whatever you believe in: existing legal doccuments, the constitution, moral philosophy, political belief, etc.

What do you all think?

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for himself, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, race, religion or holy cause" - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

 

[therealUT]

If you get rid of the 16th Amendment (the Federal Income Tax) and the Federal Minimum Wage, then most of these issues take care of themselves.

Marriage is a religious ceremony. If you don't believe in a religion, then why not have sex and children out of wedlock? If you get rid of the income tax, then you get rid of marriage tax breaks, and the issue of Gay Marriage becomes one for individual Churches to decide on.

Education also should not be provided by the government, neither should welfare, federally funded abortions, or try to influence social behavior.

The federal government should serve two main purposes:
Facilitate trade (between other nations as well as states.)

Provide national defense.

 

[OrangeEmpire]

Just to add to the discussion.

"Government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control - i.e, under objectively defined laws" - Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

One sentence to say it all. Basically, the primary purpose of government is to keep force or fraud out of human relations. To accomplish this, government needs to provide three things:

* A police service and criminal justice system, to protect citizens from forceful actions of other citizens.
* A military to protect citizens from the forceful actions of other nations.
* A system of civil law and courts to enforce contracts and settle disputes between citizens.

The government must in the furtherance of those three objectives, be subject and bound as much as possible by objective laws, rules and procedures. A state that enforces criminal law, but without objective rules for the gathering and using evidence to establish whether a crime has been committed, without objective procedures to conduct a trial to establish guilt or innocence or objective means of doling out punishments or enacting restitutions is little more than a legislated lynch mob. A state whose military prosecutes war against foreign nations (or internal dissidents) that is not similarly bound by objective laws and legal controls is the essence of tyranny.

I believe that government, in its every action, must be constrained by laws and procedure. I believe that private individuals should be basically free to do as they wish, so long as they respect the rights of others and merely refrain from doing what is forbidden. Government, on the other hand, should be allowed to do only what is expressly permitted it by the laws that govern the government itself, i.e, the constitution.

Now, do I think that government should be restricted to and only to the three things I've listed above? Not necessarily. When it comes to the other possible roles of government: enforce social roles and norms, maintain cultural hegonomy, redistribute wealth and power and so on, I don't believe that government should never do those things. I do believe, however, that the burden of proof rests upon those who would see government do those things prove the necessity of doing so.

 

[volinbham]

Just to add to the discussion.

"Government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control - i.e, under objectively defined laws" - Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

One sentence to say it all. Basically, the primary purpose of government is to keep force or fraud out of human relations. To accomplish this, government needs to provide three things:

* A police service and criminal justice system, to protect citizens from forceful actions of other citizens.
* A military to protect citizens from the forceful actions of other nations.
* A system of civil law and courts to enforce contracts and settle disputes between citizens.

The government must in the furtherance of those three objectives, be subject and bound as much as possible by objective laws, rules and procedures. A state that enforces criminal law, but without objective rules for the gathering and using evidence to establish whether a crime has been committed, without objective procedures to conduct a trial to establish guilt or innocence or objective means of doling out punishments or enacting restitutions is little more than a legislated lynch mob. A state whose military prosecutes war against foreign nations (or internal dissidents) that is not similarly bound by objective laws and legal controls is the essence of tyranny.

I believe that government, in its every action, must be constrained by laws and procedure. I believe that private individuals should be basically free to do as they wish, so long as they respect the rights of others and merely refrain from doing what is forbidden. Government, on the other hand, should be allowed to do only what is expressly permitted it by the laws that govern the government itself, i.e, the constitution.

Now, do I think that government should be restricted to and only to the three things I've listed above? Not necessarily. When it comes to the other possible roles of government: enforce social roles and norms, maintain cultural hegonomy, redistribute wealth and power and so on, I don't believe that government should never do those things. I do believe, however, that the burden of proof rests upon those who would see government do those things prove the necessity of doing so.

I think this is well stated but points out two areas of trouble (not with your statement but with that statement in practice):

First - the libertarian view is appealing but as I've argued before, it is unworkable in practice. There is no universal definition of what "respecting the rights of others" means. In effect, how can I respect the rights of others if I don't know what those rights are? To say the individual has the "right" to do anything that doesn't infringe of the rights of others is of little help. Inevitably "rights" will overlap and some authority will be needed to resolve the dispute. There must be some framework that prioritizes rights so these resolutions can be achieved.

Second - as we move away from the 3 bullet points into the last paragraph (enforcing norms, cultural hegemony, etc.) we again run into a definitional problem. Clearly society can advance through these types of governmental actions but setting the boundary becomes quite blurry and open to interpretation and the desires of the majority. In short, by empowering government to dabble in these areas (which I agree we should) leads to a constant struggle to find the balance.

Despite these two problems, I concur with your view on the role of the govt. I believe much of the political struggles we see are centered around the two problems described above.

 

[OrangeEmpire]

Just to throw some more stuff around................

The obvious question is, of course, what happens if "the will of the people" is to do things like redistribute wealth or empower historically disadvantaged groups?

Let's say a democratic nation elects by a wide margin a social democratic party whose platform is to nationalize industry, strengthen labor, redistribute wealth, bring in reparations and affirmative action for minorities and so on.

If this party speaks for the majority of the nation's people as evidenced by poll results, is it right for it to implement this platform?

Or we will get a little crazy and say finding balance. Equality. It is the only way to even come within a fading echo of a society where no one feels abused, deprived, exploited or marginalized. We cannot jump to the erroneous conclusion that all Americans enjoy equal protection, representation, opportunity and/or access to the simple resources of daily life. The United States government works best when it strives to live up to its oh-so-grand, high-sounding and allegedly "self evident" truths regarding all being "created equal."

You know the rest: as long as certain haughty members of government feel their so-called position (a fantasized God-given or other position) is somehow...threatened...by the mere idea of equality, government fails where it counts most, hence the neverending chaos among Americans, and even down to this little message board.

Or the feel good notion that the government is here to protect the weak. And we're all weak in differing ways, and strong in others. I mean, if we could all take care of ourselves and our own fine, why would we need to get together in tribes and such. The fact is we can't. Not reliably, anyway.

So your vote may be that government's proper role is to protect the happiness and safety of it's populace. Sometimes that means limiting what people can do, and sometimes it means letting them do what they want as long as they don't endanger others. I certainly don't think it should be about enforcing social mores or creating equality. But if enforcing social mores is the best, most efficient way to ensure a certain happiness or safety, there you go. And same for creating equality.

But at the same time isn't wise for a village to practice social mores to help prevent members of it's village from hurting others. It's a way to simply preventing a future problem by instilling an ideal of beliefs and practices that everyone knows and should obey and when someone violates them then they cold be seen as a threat to the well being of the village?

If you allow everyone to have their own set of social mores then your setting up for disaster because one person will think their social mores are better than the other and maybe one social mores can hurt the village in the process.

The point is that in order to have a peaceful well run village you have to have a certain set of ground rules that no one in the village must cross.

 

[volinbham]

Yes.

Individual freedoms conflict with the needs of the collective. This is the tension of the system. Change typically comes at the edges. As our religious discussion indicates, slow and small changes in interpretation of the establishment clause have erroded any connection between govt and religion. The battles now (e.g. cross at Mt. Soladad, God in the pledge, etc.) show how far those small changes have come. In other words, the violations of the Constitution must been relative blatant in the past (vis-a-vis the establishment clause) if things such as the cross at Mt. Soladad are now the issue.

I think the establishment clause issue is quite interesting as an example of how one interpretation (Black) can lead to the exposure so many violations (real or perceived) of that clause. So many of the rulings on govt and religion are based on extrapolations of this interpretation. Since that interpertation is debatable, it calls into question all the subsequent decisions. Such is the system we have.

Same with civil rights. The early changes were obviously necessary and abuses still exist. However, due to those changes, others are seeing violations of civil rights in the most minute sense and see these fights as a continuation of the struggle (whether or not it is a fight taken too far).

 

[therealUT]

Easy fix:

Unless physical harm to another (which includes others' property) is caused, freedom to do is unlimited.

 

[volinbham]

Easy fix:

Unless physical harm to another (which includes others' property) is caused, freedom to do is unlimited.

What about mental abuse of a spouse or children?

 

[therealUT]

What about mental abuse of a spouse or children?

The spouse should take the children and leave. I have no sympathy for those people who can't overcome verbal abuse and get out of that relationship.

 

[volinbham]

What if I choose to play Barry Manilow's "Looks Like We Made It" on a constant loop with my speakers in the windows and the stereo at full blast.

This might cause some to become physically ill but would generally just be annoying as hell. Is that my right eventhough no (or little) physical harm was done?

 

[therealUT]

As long as you are not physically restricting anyones ability to move out of earshot of the Manilow, then fine.

 

[volinbham]

As long as you are not physically restricting anyones ability to move out of earshot of the Manilow, then fine.

So my neighbor would have to leave? Sweet!

 

[OWB]

So my neighbor would have to leave? Sweet!

I have some neighbors that I'd like to leave. I'll give that a shot.